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Art and Collective Social Justice
Yul-San Liem
3-19-05
These remarks were presented at the closing of premier showing of Still Present Pasts. The Exhibition is Presently at Wellesley College
I am a Korean community activist in New York City. I work and volunteer for a Queens based community organization called Nodutdol for Korean Community Development. I graduated from the School of Visual Arts painting little watercolor illustrations. Soon after I got involved with Still Present Pasts (SPP) and started making big installations. I don’t believe in art for art’s sake. I see art as a tool and for me it’s a tool and strategy for work for social change.
Why did I join SPP?
The SPP offered me an opportunity
to do exactly what I dreamed of doing with my artistic training. It also
gave me a setting to do it in that allowed me to strengthen relationships
and comradeships I already had and to build new ones. It allowed me to
put me belief in the power of public, socially conscious art- a belief
I was told was naïve while
in school- to the test. I wanted to see if art can actually say
something outside of the “art dialogue”- to say something
to people. To see if art can aid in healing and ultimately to further
personal, familial, community, national, and global transformation.
